Archive for January, 2011

On January 18, 2011, with Fisher v. Texas, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals restated the constitutionality of the University of Texas’s use of race in its undergraduate admissions process. The decision, written by Judge Patrick E. Higginbotham, marks a stop for the first federal court challenge to Grutter v. Bollinger—the landmark 2003 Supreme Court decision. 539 U.S. 306 (2003). In Fisher v. Texas, the Fifth Circuit adhered to the pronouncements of Grutter. The court found that serious, “good-faith consideration” supported UT’s decision to reintroduce a race-conscious admissions policy, even as it layers atop of Texas’s Top Ten Percent Law—a law, enacted in 1997, that guarantees Texas students graduating in the top ten percent of their high school class automatic admission to all state-funded universities. In ultimate, the Fifth Circuit stated that diversity was, and still is, a compelling interest. Read more

“Cook, coke, cash.” In the song Digital Girl Kanye West alliterates this summation of celebrity life. Though certainly made of other substance(s), the world of celebrity largely remains a distant one, a daydream one. Celebrity is an untouchable life despite the guilty (and yet still reverent) fascination with which we reach for celebrity magazines, click on gossip sites, or eagerly scour the critical annals of the internet for ‘insider’ information on the lives of our most beloved—and often hated—stars.

In the past decade truancy has become a hot topic. From President Bush’s 2001 “No Child Left Behind” program to the increasing number of states enacting truancy programs, our country has increasingly shifted its sights towards youth education. Education has been shown again and again to be vital to American life. Statistics such as the fact that over 88% of all adult prison inmates in Georgia are high-school dropouts, or a study which shows that simply atteding school while in jail reduces the likelihood of reincarceration by 29% provide ample evidence in support of the nation’s push to keep its kids in school.